This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

The latest iOS 5 beta contains a new “Assistive” touchscreen gesture package that seems to do more than just help people who have button issues, as it negates all the hardware buttons except the one used to turn the device on.

The gestures, which aren’t turned on by default due to their “assistive” nature, work by allowing the user to swipe inward from any of the screen’s corners to bring up a menu. That menu has options and submenus that allow volume control, orientation lock, access to favorites, simulated gestures (like “shaking” the device), and last but not least–a simulated Home button.

During the beta stages of iOS 4.3, a suite of gestures was included that allowed users to swipe in and out of full-screen apps, to access the multi-tasking bar with a simple swipe upwards, and to swipe between apps without needing to leave them in the first place. None of those gestures made it into the release version–which made many testers think the functionality may have been shelved with plans to release at a later date.

iOS 5 might just be the right time to bring those gestures back. Since the iOS 4.3 release, we’ve seen Apple unveil both a new Notification Center for its iOS devices and Mission Control for OS X. Both are major new features that are basically comprised of HUDs, brought on chiefly by gestures. The impending release of OS X Lion could be why Apple chose to wait on the release of more extensive gesture controls in iOS–with the end goal of keeping the look and feel uniform across its two platforms.

But the bigger (and inevitable) discussion is about the effect that such gestures would have on the hardware buttons of iOS devices. People have been throwing the idea around for well over a year now that Apple could one day remove buttons from iOS devices altogether. Is such a drastic design action possible, or even necessary?

Sure, you could get around iOS without ever touching the Home button again if there’s built-in gestures that do everything the button can do, but what about screenshots, hard resets, or voice controls while the screen is turned off? They wouldn’t be possible if the only button on the device was for power.

Then again, iMacs come with a single power button on the back and wireless peripherals. Ten years ago, people would have thought that was crazy. Now it’s just “Apple.”